


And My Ring to Wear

by kaasknot



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Artistic license: municipal bureaucracy, Fluff, Gay fucking marriage y'all, M/M, Obligatory post-war Louisiana fic, outside pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: “Here to apply for a marriage license?” she asked politely, as though she didn’t have a whole stack of them before her, and as if she hadn’t already prepared close to twenty since City Hall opened.“Yes, ma’am,” the skinnier of the two said.“Your names?” she asked.“Eugene Roe and Edward Heffron,” he answered.
Relationships: Babe Heffron/Eugene Roe
Comments: 14
Kudos: 81





	And My Ring to Wear

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this fic edged alarmingly close to my personal RPF discomfort zone, so in case it makes you itchy too, just know that this is about the characters portrayed in the HBO miniseries and not at all about the real men whose lives the show was based on. No disrespect intended. Old Robin Laing, not old Babe Heffron! *snaps rubber band around wrist*
> 
> Title from [”City Hall”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rikj0WMGbDU) by Vienna Teng.

The Baton Rouge City Hall wasn’t packed, not like Renée imagined it would have been in a bigger, more liberal city like New York or Los Angeles, but even the second-largest city in Louisiana had its share of gays wanting to get married.

Before last Friday, Renée hadn’t paid much attention to same-sex marriage. She worked for the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court’s office, and every so often a stubborn-faced pair would apply for a license, but nothing came of it. The law was the law, and the law in Louisiana was quite firm on those matters. Social change was slow in the South; things took their time, winding to and fro like conversation beneath sweltering summer oaks. Renée had her beau, and she supposed it was unfair that others couldn’t have theirs, but the law was the law, and honestly, she was more interested in finishing her accounting degree before she got too old for children.

“Hi, there!” she said to the newest couple that came in. “Here to apply for a license?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the skinnier of the two said. His voice was cracked with age, but there was a southern honey drawl underneath that must have been a torment to all the girls when he was young. “We’ve got all the paperwork we need right here.”

It wasn't precisely done, for the Clerk of Court to set up in the City Hall foyer, but this wasn't a typical weekday. Renée had gotten certified as a Notary Public several years back on a whim, and as no one else in the office had stood forward, she'd volunteered to staff the booth for the post-legalization rush. She hadn’t had to wait long after the doors opened for the first couples to arrive.

If she was being honest, she was a little shocked at the demand. To think, there were that many people who had wanted to get married? 

This couple made her heart melt, though. Two old men, eighty if they were a day, leaning on each other with a careful, well-worn devotion that she could see from all the way across the rotunda. They were dressed to the nines in freshly-pressed suits, each with an American flag pin on one lapel and a military badge with wings on the other. On their heads, those funny triangular caps soldiers always wore, emblazoned with a patch showing an open parachute. Veterans, almost certainly; a solid dozen other, equally-aged men stood with them, many wearing military-style khaki jackets or baseball caps covered with pins and ribbons. Behind them stood a small crowd of younger folks--friends and family. Renée felt a pang at that; not everyone who came in had family to stand with them.

“Y’all’ve got good timing,” she said, to make conversation as she cross-checked their documentation against the state’s database. “The lunch rush isn’t for another hour or so.”

The first who had spoken, he was clearly a son of the South--his features were sharp and pointed, but his manner quietly genteel. It was his partner who answered Renée. “Good!” he proclaimed, in the broadest Yankee accent she’d ever heard. “I’ve waited 70 years for this reprobate to make an honest woman outta me, I don’t wanna wait any longer than I gotta!” He was a little stouter around the middle, and his grin was positively infectious.

“Babe,” his partner said, in a quelling but fond way. He was the more upright and formal of the two, that was clear. _A dowager_, Renée’s mind dug up, and she blushed at her own pettiness. He was a war veteran, Vietnam more than likely, and here she was, making fun. She covered it by pulling up the paperwork on her laptop.

“Your names?” she asked. She didn’t need to, it was right there on their birth certificates, but she liked to. She’d always liked hearing people talk about themselves, especially when they were applying for marriage licenses: they were all so glad, it made her believe in happy endings.

“Eugene Roe,” the first said, his eyes bright and color high in his cheeks.

“And Edward Heffron,” the second finished, slightly awkwardly, like he wasn’t used to saying it.

“Bill Guarnere!” a man with arm crutches and one leg hollered after.

“Yeah, and I’m George Luz!”

“Youse ain’t marrying him, he’s mine!” Mr. Heffron shouted back to general laughter, and though Mr. Roe didn’t say anything to all this, he smiled nonetheless. Their simple happiness radiated throughout the room, transforming their wrinkled, distinguished faces back to the boyish handsomeness they must have had when they'd first met.

“What’s your name?” Mr. Heffron added, turning back to Renée.

Renée told him, and Mr. Roe’s features softened in bittersweet remembrance.

“I knew a woman named Renée, back in the war,” he said. “She was kindness in a sea of misery.” He gave her a warm smile. “It’s a lovely name for a lovely woman.”

“Oh, why--thank you,” Renée said, blushing again. “Which war did y’all fight in?”

“The Second World War,” Mr. Heffron said, his chest puffing out. “We were paratroopers. 101st Airborne.”

There was a ripple through the crowd at that--not from their own party, but in the other well-wishers around them. Even Renée sat back in shock. She’d had a great-uncle who'd died in Normandy, and her grandfather, rest his soul, had lied about his age and fought in the Pacific. “World War Two,” she breathed. She glanced down at the birth certificates still sitting on the table, and the dates slotted into place: 1922, 1923. These men weren’t in their eighties, they were both well over ninety. 

“Thank you for your service,” one of the last couples Renée had helped said, turning around to offer his hand to shake.

Mr. Heffron took it, a solid, proud look in his eye. “Thank you. But we did what any American would for our country.”

“I’m glad our country finally returned the favor,” the man replied.

“Me too,” Mr. Heffron said, and the look he gave Mr. Roe in that moment was sweeter than Renée’s mother’s pecan pie. Mr. Roe just took Mr. Heffron’s hand, just held it right there in front of everyone in City Hall without fear, and Renée, oh, she understood, now, why gay marriage was such a big deal. She couldn’t imagine having to live 70 years without being able to say publicly that she loved her man.

“I’m gonna start crying, now,” she said, dabbing a kleenex beneath her eyes as she printed off the license. “Did you two meet when you joined up, then?”

“Babe was a replacement,” Mr. Roe said, nodding to his husband-to-be. “I jumped in Normandy, but Babe didn’t join the company until Operation Market Garden.”

The one named Guarnere piped up. “Yeah, Babe, remember how Buck fleeced you blind? Thought you was winning, and he--”

“Hey Bill, remember how we all used to call you--”

“But we didn’t really notice each other until Bastogne,” Mr. Roe said, raising his voice to be heard.

A general hissing sigh went through the clot of veterans around them. “Bastogne.”

“Worst part of the war,” Mr. Heffron said, shaking his head. “We didn’t have anything to do for weeks on end but sit in foxholes and wait for the Germans to shell us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mr. Roe said, but not without humor.

"That's right," Mr. Guarnere spoke up again. “Doc Roe had his work cut out for him, patching us back together after the shelling stopped!” It occurred to Renée then, sharp as a smack in the face, that Mr. Guarnere had likely lost his leg in the war, and that Mr. Roe was likely the reason he was alive at all.

“So you’re a doctor?” She asked, flustered.

“No ma’am, I was a medic.”

“Gene was there for me after--after a particularly bad one,” Mr. Heffron told Renée. “He did that for all of us, kept us all sane. I don’t know how he did it.”

Mr. Roe’s expression was impossibly fond. “It's ‘cause you were there for me, Babe."

A moment passed between them, brief and private, before Mr. Heffron gently shook their clasped hands. "Well," he said, sounding choked. "At least you finally learned my name."

"I guess I did," Mr. Roe replied, beaming love like the sun shed light.

“Oh,” Renée said, softly, hesitant to interrupt, but unable to avoid it. “Well, I--I’m so glad you found each other, and I’m sorry you had to wait so long for this, but--” she turned the newly-printed license around. “If you both could just sign here and here, you can take this inside and they’ll get you married.”

They did as she bid, their hands shaking and liver-spotted around the pen, but two dashes of copperplate, a signature from Mr. Guarnere as witness, and Renée’s notarization later, their license was ready to go. “Look at this!” Mr. Heffron held it up so the crowd behind them could see. “Now the Major and Captain Nixon can finally get off their high horse and tie the knot, too!”

A ripple of laughter went through the wedding guests, and Renée was crying in earnest, now, tears coming down despite the smile she couldn't fight off if she'd tried. Mr. Guarnere grabbed Mr. Heffron’s face and kissed both his cheeks, and then he kissed both of Mr. Roe’s, and then a spate of kissing and hugging went through the crowd--not just the veterans and their families, but everyone else, too, pulled in by the joy that was bubbling over like champagne. The two grooms gave their thanks to Renée, and then began their slow, shuffling way down the hall to the commissioner’s office, their well-wishers trailing after.

“I’m so glad I got to see this,” Renée said to Mr. Guarnere, who had stayed by the booth, beaming like a proud parent and letting others go ahead of him. “I’m so happy, I just--” she waved her hand to try and encompass all that she was feeling.

Mr. Guarnere looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know,” he said, sounding as brashly northern as Mr. Heffron, “I didn’t like it when I found out about them.” He shrugged, his crutches clacking. “It was the times, we didn’t talk about this stuff then, and I didn’t know better.” Then he squared and thrust out his jaw. “But Babe Heffron is one’a the best men I’ve ever known, and Gene, too. They deserve this, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

It struck her, then: all of these men were heroes, part of a rapidly dwindling generation, their stories disappearing with them; and she wondered, all of a sudden, how many other veterans their age had died before they could marry their loved ones. She pressed a hand against her heart, overcome, and said words she'd never have thought she'd say in her life: “I only wish this whole--gay marriage thing could have happened sooner.”

A young man came up, putting a hand on Mr. Guarnere’s shoulder. “Gramps, c’mon, they're waiting for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, just a minute.” Mr. Guarnere looked back at Renée. “The important thing is that it happened,” he said. “And that I get to be best man for my best friend at his wedding the way he was at mine.” He pointed at her. “You remember that. People talk about politics or whatever, but all it boils down to is love. Those two idiots have loved each other for longer than most of the people in this room have been alive. It’s about damn time they got something to show for it.”

“Amen,” Renée said, the only thing she could think to say.

“Gramps,” the young man urged again.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Mr. Guarnere said, swinging himself around on his crutches with a grace Renée had seen lacking in men half his age. “It was good talking with you.”

“You too,” Renée said back, but it was lost in the crowd.

She filed forty-three more applications that day. She was glad for every single one.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the single most unreservedly fluffy fic I've written in a long goddamn time. May it be a light for you in dark places, when I go back to form :P
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on [tumblr](https://kaasknot.tumblr.com/post/189985299914/and-my-ring-to-wear-kaasknot-band-of) or in a comment.


End file.
